This sculpture of an eagle owl is one of five examples of this model delivered in 1736 to the Dresden palace of Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony. Known as the Japanese Palace, the building was remodeled in the early 1730s in order to house the menagerie of large-scale porcelain animals that Augustus ordered, beginning in 1731, from his porcelain manufactory in nearby Meissen. The nanny goat and the pair of lions exhibited in this gallery also belonged to this extraordinary and ambitious commission. Only one other example of the eagle owl, considerably damaged, survives, in the Dresden Porcelain Collection.